Faint Tidal Features in Galaxies within the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Wide Fields
Adam M. Atkinson (1), Roberto G. Abraham (1), Annette M. N., Ferguson (2) ((1) Dept of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto,, (2) Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)

TL;DR
This study analyzes the detectability of faint tidal features in galaxies from the CFHTLS Wide survey, providing a catalog and revealing their dependence on galaxy color and mass.
Contribution
It offers a comprehensive catalog of faint tidal features in a large galaxy sample, highlighting their prevalence and correlation with galaxy properties, aiding future research.
Findings
12% of galaxies show clear tidal features at high confidence
18% show convincing but weaker features
26% include marginal features possibly tidal in origin
Abstract
We present an analysis of the detectability of faint tidal features in galaxies from the wide-field component of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. Our sample consists of 1781 luminous M_r<-19.3 mag) galaxies in the magnitude range 15.5<r<17 mag and in the redshift range 0.04<z<0.2. Although we have classified tidal features according to their morphology (e.g. streams, shells and tails), we do not attempt to interpret them in terms of their physical origin (e.g. major versus minor merger debris). Instead, we provide a catalog that is intended to provide raw material for future investigations which probe the nature of low surface brightness substructure around galaxies. We find that around 12% of the galaxies in our sample show clear tidal features at the highest confidence level. This fraction rises to about 18% if we include systems with convincing albeit weaker tidal…
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